A site featuring stories & poems by 10-17 year olds

When Alex and Becky Varley-Winter turned 16, they were no longer able to contribute reviews to cool-reads (where the age range is 10-15). This was seriously bad news for the cool-reads site as Alex and Becky are some of the best reviewers the site has ever had. They both write brilliant stories so we came up with the idea of extending cool-reads with a story & poem site that Alex and Becky could manage through a web interface.

To make this possible, Chris - who built the cool-reads site -  has been working away for months and months on new version of the site, which will run on a much better and faster database system, where all the elements of the site will be all linked up and which basically will have loads of brilliant features. His work is being hampered by a) some cyberspace gremlins that persist in making some elements refuse to work properly and b) by teachers who don't realise that coursework gets in the way of the really important business of website development (if anyone reading this happens to be a  programmer who good at SQL based systems and who might have time to give Chris a hand, please email him at Chris@cool-reads.co.uk).

If  you'd like to comment on the stories & poems idea, please contact Alex and Becky becky@varleywinter.com or alex@varleywinter.com. You can also browse some of the stories and poems they've collected:.

• "Tanith" - a poem by Helen
• "Why Me?" - a story by Emma
• "The Bat" - a poem by Phoebe
• "Story without a title" by Lucy
• "The Unseen Girl" a poem by Sarah
• "Little Sister" a poem by Helena
• "Remember, Remember" a poem by Chloë
• "Annabel" a story by Francesca
• A poem by Roger King
• "Imagery" a poem by Jennifer
• "Behind the door" a poem by Claire
• "A short story about life" by Libby
• "Prison" a poem by Cameron
• "Love" a poem by Hannah
• "Back to the Battle" by Suzanne